Men do not have a problem communicating, sharing, discussing or whatever you want to call it. Sustained eye-contact while that is going on is a different thing. Both genders suffer from communication challenges I would submit, but face-to-face sustained eye-contact is more difficult for men. We choose sports like football, basketball, golf and downhill luge because they do not require intimate sharing of our feelings while looking at each other, (of course, I'm not talking in an intimate way, it throws off your swing and you wind up with your golf ball in the woods). We choose our one-on-one time with friends in a similar way. Watching sporting events, playing video games, fishing and hunting. These are great activities for men. Fantasy football, basketball, baseball and other sports are the best. It allows men to cheer, curse, challenge and connect with little to no direct interaction. Do not judge. There is efficiency in the communication. Here is an example: Guy #1 - I'm thinking of leasing this next car. Guy #2 - I never lease, I always buy. Guy #1 - I can run it through the business, write it off. Guy #2 - S'pose. Guess you get a new car every couple of years. Guy #1 - So, you think I should lease. Guy #2 - I dunno. Maybe. I just don't lease. That's an efficient conversation, the whole thing is less than a minute. You can multi-task, either grilling, watching a game, drinking a beer- the list is endless. Most conversations with men are transactional. For a man, his better friends are those men with whom he has had more transactional conversations, but also needed to sort out bigger issues. There are laughs, stories, and sometimes pain. A man only needs one or two best friends. Those are different men. Those are the men who share it all. Those are the very few that hear it all or hear nothing and still know it all because those kind of friends hear the story in the silence. I have said in the past; there are the friends you can call and have over for a beer, there are those who will bring a six pack, pizza and a problem to talk about and then there are those few you can call in the middle of the night who will show up for you with a truck, two shovels and no questions. One of the best way for men to listen, talk, learn and laugh is in a car ride on their way somewhere. It works a lot better if there are just two people and there is a decent distance to cover, at least a half hour or an hour. I do not like to drive. Many people like to drive, I never fight for the wheel. When it's my turn because of fatigue or boredom, I do my part, but I don't chase the job. Lots of people love to drive which makes my preferences easy. My dad is one of those people. He likes the driving part. One time, I got a new car online from all the way in New Jersey and we had to fly there and drive it back to Indiana. My dad didn't let me drive my own new car for 200 miles, and I had to practically fight him for the wheel. We stopped for a restroom break another 100 miles down the road. I came out of the gas station and he's in the driver's seat, engine running and ready to go. When I was twelve or so, in the summer dad would take each one of his three children on the road with him for a week as he made sales calls throughout the Midwest. That is a lot of miles. He gave us the responsibility of looking at navigation, keeping track of his cold call numbers that he religiously made on the road every day, (10 before the day was over even when he had a full day of appointments). We might even talk on the CB radio to find out if there were "smokies" on the interstate. That meant truckers would tell each other by radio if they had spotted a highway patrol car who was trying to catch speeders. If dad knew the client, we went on the appointment, sat in the office and listened. If he did not, we sat in the car and waited for an hour or so and read a book. Dad would tell us on the way to the appointment all of the preparatory history of the account, people he would meet, their issues, competition and his strategy. When he came out of the sales call, he would tell us what happened. Then he would ask us questions: • "What do you think he was really saying?" • "What would you say?" • "Did we get done what we wanted?" When I was a little older, I went to a weekday boarding high school, forty minutes away. Every Sunday, my dad would drive me there, just the two of us. I need to stop for a second and talk about my dad. My dad is not a teller, he's an asker. He does not tell you what to do, he just asks questions until you figure out what you want to do about a problem or issue. Sometimes he'll venture a, "Well, I guess in a circumstance like that, it really comes down to this…and for me, I would probably do it this way, but I'm not you, so you have to decide what's right." Back to the types of questions he asked, side by side on a car ride every week as your life changes over a couple of years, two men. (My dad is sneaky- he wouldn't say anything for 5-6 minutes, he'd just drive, let the silence do the heavy lifting of opening the door for conversation). • "How are things at school?" • "Why do you think that is?" • "That sounds weird. What do think is going on there?" • "Sounds like you're stuck. How are you going to fix it?"
College and careers cut into drive times. We did not have nearly as many. Moving and different cities are the death of drive times and you are left with the unfulfilling phone calls. Every once in a while you connect like the rides. A success, an issue, a promotion or firing, family businesses are all good, but they are transactional. Circumstances have brought us back to our two men drive times. He is older and I am not able to drive because of medical conditions. We talk about hospital visits, dying friends and family, faith, politics and what to do about….well, everything. It is not the same. We are now less like a father trying to pass on a lesson and more like two guys swapping stories as we drive around sitting in the front seat.